Geffrye Museum

Entertainment & Arts

Europe, United Kingdom, London

The Geffrye Museum is a museum specialising in the history of the English domestic interior. Named after Sir Robert Geffrye, former Lord Mayor of London and Master of the Ironmongers' Company, it is located on Kingsland Road in London. The museum is housed in the Grade I-listed almshouses of the Ironmongers' Company, built in 1714 at the bequest of Geffrye. The museum has been extant since 1914. The museum shows the changing style of the English domestic interior in a series of eleven displayed period rooms from 1600 to the present day. The emphasis is on the furnishings, pictures and ornaments of the urban middle classes of London rather than the royal and aristocratic commissions often seen in museums of the decorative arts. The museum routinely holds exhibitions and seminars both in the museum itself and its walled herb garden. An annual exhibition of note is the 'Christmas Past' exhibit which sees each period room adorned as it would have been during the Christmas period.